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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Analysis of tournament winning deck lists: Battle Roads

Hello everyone!

Today, I’m going to take a look at the winning deck lists of Finnish Battle
Roads. Thankfully there were a lot of variety among the deck. Ok, saying “a
lot” is exaggerating, but let’s just say that there was enough variety to make
the tournament enjoyable. In this entry, I’ll take a look at the top4 decks of
the Masters Division AND the winner list of Seniors. I wanted to take the
Seniors winning deck to this entry, because I really enjoy the deck’s concept
and I was positively surprised when I saw the decklist.

I know Boundaries Crossed is just right behind the corner and Eye on Japan will
be coming on Monday, but I still wanted to take one more look at the present
format, before we look to the future. We’ll be playing the BW-BC format for
over 3 months and all the City Championships, so I’m pretty sure everyone will
get everything out of the new format in time. Also, to understand the present,
it’s important to understand the past – that’s why looking at for example
BW-Dragons Exalted Hydreigon/Darkrai EX and comparing it to the upcoming
Hydreigon lists, makes us understand the very roots of deck building.

Once again, thanks for the players that gave me the permission to use their
lists! There will be 5 decklist analyses in total, so it’s quite a ride we’re
going to have.

Background
of the tournament

It’s
counter-productive to just look at the tournament winning lists and see what
cards they include. To understand the card choices, you must first understand
the environment and the past of the metagame. Simply put, this tournament was
played on Sunday. However, there was a Battle Road in Finland the very same
weekend’s Saturday. As I showed in my tournament report, the top4 of that
tournament was:

The most interesting thing about this top4 was that it included 2 Garbodor
variants. These Garbodor variants did well, because the metagame wasn’t
prepared with Tool Scrappers. However, cards like Tool Scrapper are easily
teched to any deck and as you can see, every top4 list of the Sunday’s tournament
included at least one Tool Scrapper in the deck. Small changes like that are
very often make or break decisions in Pokémon TCG. And as I’ll discuss in this
entry, small changes are more than important in a quick-paced metagame like our
current one.

So, as you can see, this was the same player, who I met in the Saturday’s
Battle Road and who I faced in the Nationals finals this year. And it seems
that he is very keen on versatile decks like this. When you look at the list,
you’ll notice that it has a tech against almost everything. The only card I
really miss in the deck is Tornadus EX, because it could open some donking
options in the early game. I believe most Ho-Oh EX decks are very concentrated
on Tornadus EX, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this list.

The list hits every single common weakness of the current metagame – except
Dragon - and that’s what remarkable. I believe that this deck didn’t play
Rayquaza (Dragon Vault), because the player hadn’t an access to the card yet.
It would’ve given the deck so much more power especially against Hydreigon
match-ups. And in the end, the deck lost to a Hydreigon deck in the top4.

The most innovative thing in this deck was the use of Mew EX. You may have
wondered why on earth the player played 4 Random Receivers and only 9
Supporters. There are two reasons for this.

First of all, this deck NEEDS to hit Juniper and Ultra Ball at the same time in
order to get the Ho-Oh EXs into discard pile in a quick enough manner. Maxing
Junipers and Random Receivers while lowering the amount of other supporters is
the best way to guarantee the combo to succeed.

Second, there is Mew EX. What I really enjoy about Mew EX, is how well it works
when your opponent benches Sableye. I remember when I played against him on
Saturday and he opened with Mew EX against my Sableye – I immediately
understood how much it would affect him negatively if I didn’t had Sableye.
However, decks that use Sableye, usually really need it, so Mew EX works as
your own Sableye whenever you’re facing a deck like Hammertime or Hydreigon
variant. Junk Hunting those Ultra Balls is so good that I think that the player
of this could even consider playing 1 copy of Sableye, if he ever found space
for it.

And I dared to say that no 1-copies of cards could have played successfully
in this format. I really enjoyed this deck, because it was not only aggressive,
but also had so much depth in it. It’s rare that Speed decks can play a lot of
techs while maintaining the consistency.

Most of these decks techs are pretty selx-explanatory, thus I won’t get in to
them, but there is one tech, I really want to take a closer look at. You
guessed it – Zoroark. When BW was released two years ago and I saw Zoroark, I
knew that it would someday be a perfect 1-1 tech in decks. I just didn’t know
when that time would be. And to be honest, I didn’t really believe in Zoroark
even in the current format, before I saw it in the action. The very second turn
of the game assured me of Zoroark’s playability. In T1, Zorua uses Ascension.
In T2 you Catcher Darkrai EX from the bench to the active spot and hit Night
Spear with Foul Play. It was crazy how much damage Zoroark would really do and
how fast, whenever going first against Darkrai EX deck. And in situations where
the Darkrai EX deck couldn’t draw into PlusPowers, it was always a prize change
of 1 to 2. Sometimes even 1 to 3! You must not forget the first attack of
Zoroark either, because it’s great whenever you have a dead hand – it lets you
search for any one card. When I saw Zoroark using Nasty Plot my mind was blowed
away.

Masters 2nd Place – Hydreigon/Darkrai EX/Shaymin EX/Giratina EX

If you didn’t peek all the way to the 1st Place before reading
the article, I can now spoil you that the finals was a Hydreigon mirror match.
Even though the Hydreigon decks are usually very similar looking, these two
decks had surprisingly lot differences with the card choices. In the end, I
believe that these cards chocies was one of the huge reasons, which lead to the
victory of the 1st place Hydreigon. It would be nonsense to analyze
these lists one by one, so I’ll just compare the two lists and discuss the
differences and how the affected especially the mirror match-up.

So what’s important in a Hydreigon mirror match? The control of the board.
The control of the board is on a player, who gets the Hydreigon to the play
first and is able to eliminate the opponent’s Deinos, Zweilous and Hydreigons.
After you have eliminated all the Hydreigon lines of your opponent, your
opponent has no way of OHKOing you and you will win the game with Sableye/Max
Potion even if they are in a prize lead.

So what you need in order to get the board control? You need a consistent deck.
The more consistent the deck you have, the more probably you’ll get a T2
Hydreigon. For getting Hydreigon as soon as possible, you’ll need maximized
Rare Candies and lots of Balls that help you searching for the Deinos and
Hydreigons. And to be honest, if you want to get the Hydreigon before your
opponent, you better go first! Before going deeper, a small rant. The finals
went 2-1 and the player who went first won every game. Not cool.

The 2nd placing list wasn’t really built consistency in mind. It has
3 Rare Candies, 13 supporters and only 4 Ultra Balls – no Level Balls. On a top
of it, the deck only plays 2 Sableyes, so you pretty much never open with it
and in order to get a fast set-up, you need to get Sableye.

When looking at the 2nd placing list, you’ll notice that it’s much
more concentrated on the “main strategy” of Hydreigon decks than the 1st
placing list – keeping your attackers alive. The deck is almost built like a
Klinklang EX deck would be with 3 Max Potions and 2 Eviolites. It’s also very
clear that the players of the 2nd placing deck was mirror
orientated, because he played Giratina EX in the deck (which I by the way
wouldn’t play even if the whole metagame was Hydreigons only). Giratina EXs
risks compared to its benefits are in my opinion too much to take. If you open
with Giratina EX it will probably kill your set-up and game completely unless
you have a god hand.

The winning-Hydreigon was almost a mirror image of the 2nd placing
Hydreigon. It played 13 supporters (Bianca instead of Cheren), 5 Ball, 4
Candies and 3 Sableyes. You might not think that playing 5 Balls instead of 4
would make that much difference, but it really does. Also, all these small
differences almost double the deck’s early game consistency. Not to mention
that Bianca also guarantees the late game consistency way better than Cheren. As
discussed so many times, Bianca is always the clear choice when you have
Sableye and Ultra Balls in your deck.

The Pokémon techs of the winning list were also more conservative than those of
the 2nd placing. Shaymin EX instead of Giratina EX is much safer
choice even though they both are pretty awful when you open with them. The
reason why I prefer Shaymin EX in this deck even though I don’t really like the
card itself, is that it’s the perfect counter against Terrakion – Darkrai EX’s
worst nemesis.

Granted, the games were won by whoever went first, but with a list like the 1st
placing, it’s no surprise! It really doesn’t give any chances to another
Hydreigon when going first, because it’s so consistent and focused on getting
the Hydreigon up early on. This combined to 4 Catchers, and you have almost a
perfect Hydreigon orientated for mirror matches.

So last, but not least the Seniors winning decklist. The reason why I chose
the list is to prove that Seniors out there really can build decks. They are
very often dismissed everywhere and I sometimes are guilty for undermining
Seniors as well in the IRL discussions. However, when I saw this list, I was so
impressed that I walked to the player and said to him that the list was very
impressing.

I must admit, I’m a bit biased with this list, because it’s very close to my
personal deck building style. One more reason I was so impressed with this. First
of all, the deck has 14 draw supporters. That’s the most optimum number for
this format in my opinion. It’s a bit overboard, but it guarantees the
consistency of the deck.

The other thing I was happy to see, was the use of Bouffalant, which is one of
the most underused cards in my opinion. It also works perfectly with the 4
Energy Switches and 4 DCEs that this deck runs. Getting a free retreat with
Darkrai EX is something that is very rare in decks that play Bouffalant. Bouffalant
2HKOS every single Pokémon-EX in this format even if they have an Eviolited
attached to themselves. Even Darkrai EX can’t do it. Not to mention that it’s a
non-EX Pokémon. Bouffalant is THE most underplayed card of the current format –
hands down.

Last, the deck builder knew what he was doing with those Sableyes – the deck
has 1 copies of cards like Max Potion, Dark Claw and Potion. Cards that will
only work as a tech cards when you have an access to Sableye. Sableye gives you
many possibilities and I believe that sometimes people underestimate the power
of Sableye even in decks where it’s commonly used. Possibilities are unlimited
with Sableye and it breaks boundaries of ordinary deck building.

Conclusion

So overall, all
tournament was very interesting and I think all of these lists showcase just
how little differences can make all the difference in this game. This was my
last entry considering the current format and the next article will be the
hugely awaited first Eye on Japan of this season!

Let me know your thoughts about this article, would you like to see more of
these kinds entries with my analysis of tournament winning deck lists and deck
lists that I find interesting. I think these kind of entries are cool, because
all of these lists have really done well and I don’t have any personal bias to
any of them, because they aren’t my own lists.

4 comments:

I love the Zoroark in that Darkrai deck! I wrote an article about Zoroark in Empoleon, and I know how much potential it has! It really helps against Hydreigon decks too; being able to get rid of their Hydreigon after it's out is huge. And any Eelektrik deck that benches a Raikou EX is basically guaranteeing that you take out a few Eels.

thank you for sharing! i really like the lists from the 3rd and 4th because they are quite unique ( in terms of building). In the hooh deck i dont think that mew ex was the most innovative. I rather think Darkrai EX, Zekrom EX and Stunfisk are the most innovative cards in the ho-oh deck.

Nice article Esa. Thanks for the analysis on some very interesting decks. One question though, I don't understand the "draw count" number you have under the "supporter count" for each deck. What does this mean?

You seem to have all of this figured out, so I think this might be the best place to ask this question.i'm trying to make a lock deck using B/W cards onwards. I used to play a Sharpedo- Fliptini- Slowking lock which was suprisingly effective and screwed with a lot of people. Basically i really like fast lock decks. I have a couple of ideas for a B/W lock deck but can you give me some suggestions? i really like the Dragon Vault Salamence, and the Hooligan card but what to couple it with? Fliptini I suppose, but what else?